APRO Bulletins (historical UFO journals) now online free

If you want to understand ufology, you need to know a bit about it (often frustrating) history...

To get an insight into that history, it's worth spending a bit of time glancing through some of the journals published by a few of the better know UFO groups.

Logistically and financially, this wasn't always easy to do.

Fortunately, in the last few years quite a few collections of old journals have been made available for sale on CDs and, even better, free to download on the Internet.

Some of you will already know that the Black Vault website and MUFON had a joint project a while ago, under which a lot of MUFON's old journals were made available to download free at the link below:
MUFON Journal collection

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6858e958e095.jpg[/atsimg]

Quite a few of the sightings that have been discussed on ATS since then are in fact covered in more detail in those journals than in the material available online...

For those that aren't familiar with MUFON:
en.wikipedia.org...

The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is an American non-profit organization that investigates cases of reported UFO sightings. It is one of the oldest and largest UFO-investigative organizations in the United States.

MUFON was originally established as the Midwest UFO Network in Quincy, Illinois on May 30, 1969 by Walter H. Andrus, Allen Utke, John Schuessler, and others. Most of MUFON's early members had earlier been associated with Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).

The organization now has more than 3,000 members worldwide, with a majority of its membership base situated in the continental United States. MUFON operates a worldwide network of regional directors for field investigation of reported UFO sightings, holds an annual international symposium, and publishes the monthly MUFON UFO Journal.

The stated mission of MUFON is the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity through investigations, research and education.

Now, the OpenMinds.tv website has helpfully made available for free download a whole bunch of APRO
www....(nolink)/apro-bulletins/

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/297161b78c7d.jpg[/atsimg]

The covering article by Antonio Huneeus includes the following:

www....(nolink)/open-minds-apro-bulletin-633/

One of the many interesting items in the Wendelle Stevens UFO collection acquired by Open Minds was a nearly complete set of The APRO Bulletin, the official publication of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. Founded in Wisconsin in 1952 by Coral Lorenzen and ran jointly with her husband Jim Lorenzen into the mid-80s, APRO played a key role in the history and development of both American and international ufology. To paraphrase Star Trek, APRO went where others had not dared to go—the rich and uncharted territory of humanoid cases, close encounters of the third kind (CE-III) and eventually abductions. These subjects were mostly ignored back then by the official Air Force Project Blue Book, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the other big UFO organization of the time, and most mainstream researchers and scientists. The mindset back then was to concentrate mostly on UFO sightings and stay as far away as possible from the colorful claims of ET contact paraded in the media by George Adamski, Howard Menger and other popular contactees.

APRO started in 1952, the year of the great American UFO wave, as a small, dues paying membership organization with a mimeographed periodical, the APRO Bulletin, edited by Coral Lorenzen. In 1954, the Lorenzen family moved from Wisconsin to Alamogordo, New Mexico, as both Jim and Coral were hired to work as civilian employees at Holloman Air Force Base. In 1960 Jim was hired as senior technical associate with the Kitt Peak National Observatory and so the Lorenzens moved to Tucson, Arizona, where they lived till the end of their lives in the 1980s. In 1964 Jim became the director of APRO and Coral served as secretary-treasurer and editor of the Bulletin. Lt. Col. Wendelle Stevens moved to Tucson when he retired from the USAF, where he had the opportunity of working closely with the Lorenzens for many years. His collection of the Bulletin spans decades, from 1954 into the early1980s, providing an invaluable record of that ufological era.

(Some of you may be familiar with Antonio Huneeus. He was one of the people involved in writing the Rockefeller Briefing Document, discussed in a previous thread at : Best cases - Rockefeller Briefing Document


References:

APRO Bulletins

MUFON Journals


Enjoy,

Isaac

reply to post by IsaacKoi


Thanks for all the info op.

Just a question, are you the same Isaac from the carat drone ship debacle?

Anyone that thinks their thoughts about government infiltration of UFO groups is a new idea really should have a look through some of these old journals.

That sort of speculation (usually, but not always, without any factual basis whatsoever) has been around for decades - often when one ufologist simply disagrees with another ufologist's dismissal of a particular case.

Have a glance at the extract below from one of the early APRO Bulletin, written by Coral and Jim Lorenzen:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7ee89825701f.jpg[/atsimg]

For more on the tendency of UFO researchers to accuse anyone whose opinion's they dislike of being governmnent disinformation agents, see the thread on ATS entitled : " Top 100 Real "Men in Black" "

All the best,

Isaac

Originally posted by FoxfilesMulder
Just a question, are you the same Isaac from the carat drone ship debacle?

I'll send you a U2U about this later.

All the best,

Isaac

Originally posted by IsaacKoi
For more on the tendency of UFO researchers to accuse anyone whose opinion's they dislike of being governmnent disinformation agents, see the thread on ATS entitled : " Top 100 Real "Men in Black" "

At the same time as throwing around those accusations, they have been quite happy for their organisations to be infiltrated and in many cases practically run by intelligence operatives.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...
etc.

Originally posted by Pimander
they have been quite happy for their organisations to be infiltrated and in many cases practically run by intelligence operatives.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Hi Pimander,

I don't think the links you posted prove your claims.

I'm aware of better evidence than that in relation to certain episodes in the history of ufology, but even that evidence does not justify a claim that UFO groups are "in many cases practically run by intelligence operatives".

All the best,

Isaac

reply to post by IsaacKoi


Excellent find, man! Thanks for posting this. I look forward to reading through these.

Originally posted by IsaacKoi
I don't think the links you posted prove your claims.

I'm aware of better evidence than that in relation to certain episodes in the history of ufology, but even that evidence does not justify a claim that UFO groups are "in many cases practically run by intelligence operatives".

Sorry Isaac. I was tired and made a couple of lazy posts last night.

I agree that the links don't prove the case. However, I suspect you have guessed that I have better evidence. I will save it for a more appropriate thread though.

Oh yes, I think that 'in many cases' is a bit of an overstatement (I was tired). NICAP is a good example of an organisation we could point the finger at. It appears that intelligence in the UK have not been as interested in running things (mainly observing) as they have in the US and Australia but I could be wrong.

Originally posted by Pimander
I agree that the links don't prove the case. However, I suspect you have guessed that I have better evidence. I will save it for a more appropriate thread though.

Fair enough. I look forward to that thread. These are pretty murky, but interesting, waters...

Isaac (and Arken) thanks for posting these journals - I was trying to find out more information about a particular case and clicked on the relevant date - bingo, there it was front page.

Palrolmen Chase UAO Two Hours

At 11:50 p. m. on the night of 18 August
1960, Highway Patrolmen Stanley
Scott and Charles Carson of Red Bluff,
California, were in pursuit of a speeding
motorcycie on Hoag Road when they
spotted a strange object about 1b degrees
elevation in the east. For the ensuing
two hours and 1b minutes, Carson
and Scott pursued the object. The
detailed story is one of the most interesting
we have ever encountered..

APRO Bulletin - September, 1960

Cheers.

Originally posted by karl 12
Isaac (and Arken) thanks for posting these journals - I was trying to find out more information about a particular case and clicked on the relevant date - bingo, there it was front page.

Palrolmen Chase UAO Two Hours

At 11:50 p. m. on the night of 18 August
1960, Highway Patrolmen Stanley
Scott and Charles Carson of Red Bluff,
California, were in pursuit of a speeding
motorcycie on Hoag Road when they
spotted a strange object about 1b degrees
elevation in the east. For the ensuing
two hours and 1b minutes, Carson
and Scott pursued the object. The
detailed story is one of the most interesting
we have ever encountered..

APRO Bulletin - September, 1960

Cheers.

or, Maybe, we must thank YOU for all of your news and search and important topics during these years, Karl!

I'm absolutely sure that Justin "jkrog08" he would have been proud of your job!

reply to post by Arken


Thanks a lot mate and those words mean a lot , I'm sure Jkrog (and Internos) would have been right on top of that case.




reply to post by Pimander


Pimander, you raise some very interesting points mate, here's what NICAP had to say about Colonel Joseph Bryan the third:

By 1969, Keyhoe turned his focus away from the military and focused on the CIA as the source of the UFO cover up. By December 1969, NICAP's board, headed by Colonel Joseph Bryan III, forced Keyhoe to retire as NICAP chief. Bryan was actually a former covert CIA agent who had served as founder and head of the CIA's psychological warfare division. Under Bryan's leadership, NICAP disbanded its local and state affiliate groups.

Link

How the Real NICAP began

Cheers.

The one thing I noticed right away is that the file sizes of these are outrageously large for PDFs that most of the time are only 8 pages long and which bear text quality that is only moderate (And a few of them are unreadable). Had the creator started with high quality scans (Should never be less than 300 dpi) and then finished with ClearScan OCR rendered to 300 dpi the text quality could have been fantastic and the file sizes much, much smaller. For an explanation of how ClearScan works check out this.

acrobatusers.com...

I batched these files into Adobe Acrobat Pro to convert them to ClearScan OCR. The result is smaller file sizes and in some instances sharper text quality (While many sport better looking text than the originals despite smaller file sizes the few that were totally unreadable remain so. ClearScan is at its best when converting mid to high quality scans into high quality, small, and searchable PDF files. It can't accomplish much with source material that is unreadable). The higher quality the original files were the greater the reduction in file size and the boost to text clarity. The ones that are still quite large are so because the originals were so poor there wasn't much ClearScan could do with them (And/Or because there were a lot of pictures in the file. ClearScan only effects text). So the smallest files (Some are now just a few hundred kbs where the originals were several megs) tend to be the best looking ones. Additionally, some of the originals had pages that were very crooked and those have been straightened out. Not all of them are perfectly straight (Though many are) but there is certainly a big improvement. All in all the original 93 files totaled 785 megs and these new versions total 161 megs when unpacked. For anyone interested I put all 93 (As of the time of this post that is all that has been made available so far) of these new versions into a rar archive and uploaded it to Megaupload.:

www.megaupload.com...

If in the future somebody tries to download this and it isn't there that will be because Megaupload deletes files after they go 21 consecutive days without a download.

reply to post by Wickerman1972

Great work Wickerman. I'm downloading as I type these words.

reply to post by karl 12

Karl, the whole NICAP affair just illustrates one thing for me. TPTB in the US were desperate to influence public opinion regarding UFOs. Anyone who doubts that only has to read the Robertson Panel Report to see that the authorities had designs on influencing public opinion. There is so much mileage in the topic I guess we should stop here as we are off topic already

I don't have much to add right now, just a thanks to Isaac for the thread and a thanks to Wickerman1972 for the .rar file.

reply to post by Pimander


Hey Pimander, you're not wrong about that Robertson panel and Terry Hansen makes some very interesting comments here about how the CIA attempted to managed the 'public perception' of the UFO subject - you're also right about taking the thread off topic but below are some other released journals which can be read in conjunction with the APRO bulletins -


Major Donald Keyhoe's UFO Archives


Cheers.

They've added 11 more.

www.megaupload.com...

Edit: These ones all look pretty good. No unreadable parts. Most of the unreadable ones were very old issues. For all I know the ink might be wore off the pages rather than them having been scanned at a low resolution. Most of them look fine. As he posts searchable image versions I'll post ClearScan versions for whomever might want them (I convert every scanned PDF in searchable image OCR I download to ClearScan anyway so it's no sweat off my back to merely provide a download link afterward).

Originally posted by karl 12
below are some other released journals which can be read in conjunction with the APRO bulletins -

Major Donald Keyhoe's UFO Archives

Thanks for the link Karl. By the way, I don't think the NICAP journals are available online yet - but someone (CUFOS??) was selling a DVD containing a full scanned set of NICAP's journals.

Originally posted by Wickerman1972
I batched these files into Adobe Acrobat Pro to convert them to ClearScan OCR. The result is smaller file sizes and in some instances sharper text quality (While many sport better looking text than the originals despite smaller file sizes the few that were totally unreadable remain so. ClearScan is at its best when converting mid to high quality scans into high quality, small, and searchable PDF files. It can't accomplish much with source material that is unreadable).
...

www.megaupload.com...

Sounds good to me.

Downloading now...

Many thanks for taking the time to do this,

Isaac

Originally posted by IsaacKoi

Originally posted by karl 12
below are some other released journals which can be read in conjunction with the APRO bulletins -

Major Donald Keyhoe's UFO Archives

Thanks for the link Karl. By the way, I don't think the NICAP journals are available online yet - but someone (CUFOS??) was selling a DVD containing a full scanned set of NICAP's journals.

Yeah, IUR and NICAP journals are both on sale from CUFOS:

www.cufos.org...

www.cufos.org...

Although I'm at a bit of a loss as to why the IUR disc would stop at 2007 considering we're in 2011 now.

I ran into a guy online once that had the IUR disc and tried talking him into sending the PDFs to me (I had the full intention of torrenting them for everyone, right or wrong) but he wouldn't.